Defiance Being Published On Xbox 360, PS3 By Namco Bandai

The retail release of Trion Worlds and Syfy's third-person, MMO action-shooter, Defiance, will be handled by none other than Namco Bandai, the famed publishers behind Tekken, Naruto and DragonBall Z. Namco will be in charge of the SKUs for the Xbox 360, PS3 and the endangered species known as retail PC. The game is scheduled to ship to a retailer near-you this spring, on April 2nd.

Carlson Choi, Vice President of Marketing at Namco Bandai Games America, commented about the game's retail distribution, saying...

“With its direct connection with the Syfy television show, Defiance is breaking new ground in dynamic storytelling within videogames,” ...“Never in the history of videogames has player interactions and videogame scenarios had a direct effect on a television show’s storyline and vice versa. We’re excited to see Defiance provide pulse pounding entertainment on two fronts!”

Well it is promising that what happens in the game could affect the show and what happens in the show (based on what happens in the game) can affect what happens in the game. It's like a strange cycle, where you put ham on a sandwich with cheese or put cheese on a sandwich with ham and debate about whether you call it a ham and cheese sandwich, or a cheese and ham sandwich. Philosophical discussions of lunchtime gastronomy can be deep stuff...I know.

Anyway, Defiance takes place in an open-world, semi-apocalyptic setting. Players can venture around, engage in some PvE, engage in some PvP and/or witness other people doing it, completely and entirely interdependent from instances. I really like that concept but there's no telling how well it'll work out in the long run.

So far, word of mouth around the block is that this will be a better console-style MMO than it will be a PC MMO. There's nothing really wrong with that given the poor amount of console MMOs, but it will beg us all to question whether the game will have legs to stand on if the console ports are the definitive ports?